THEATER; Do-It-Yourself Entertainment, Way Off Broadway

By KATE GALBRAITH

Published: December 10, 2006

THE minstrel struggled with the high notes. So did the jester. The director anxiously swallowed Tic Tacs throughout the performance. The audience made do with tablecloths that were too short.

But nobody fell off the stage, and the steaks before showtime were delicious. And here in Kiowa, population 965 and falling, that counts as a resounding theatrical success.

This version of ''Once Upon a Mattress,'' a musical retelling of ''The Princess and the Pea,'' would probably be unrecognizable to anyone who saw it on Broadway in 1959 or in revival after that. At the Border Line Theater, named for Kiowa's proximity to the Kansas-Oklahoma border, the cast is all volunteers. Princess Winnifred, the intrepid protagonist, is played by a schoolteacher. The king is a rural mail carrier who works part time for a Wal-Mart in Oklahoma. Sir Studley, one of the knights, plays center for the high school football team.

The cooks who prepare dinner ahead of the show are local too. Several men grill the 200 or so filets out back, while a restaurant in the next town supplies baked potatoes and cheese-laden green beans. The theater's board members bring dessert. (If they don't make the same tasty chocolate pudding every time, the audience will rebel.) A women's group called the Young Homemakers washes the dishes.

''In this community everybody does everything,'' said Julie Sterling, who is a third-grade teacher by day and the show's hard-working director by night.

Kiowa is a wheat and cattle town that has fallen on hard times. Farmers are reeling from drought and high diesel prices. Along the wide Main Street several buildings are boarded up. Paradise Bowl and the Horseshoe Restaurant have closed, and Val's Daylight Donuts has a ''For Sale'' sign in the window. Kiowa's John Deere dealership shut down two years ago. One bright spot is the high school football team, which last year won the Kansas state championship -- in the eight-man category.

In such drab times the dinner theater helps to keep spirits up. Twice a year Kiowa's citizenry puts on a show, which runs for three nights and two matinees. One hundred and eighty-six people attended the opening night of ''Mattress'' on Oct. 21, a sellout as usual. The fall show is scheduled around football and the harvest. (Rehearsals start in August, after the wheat is cut.) The spring production stays clear of Easter and the prom.

For many Americans this is the only kind of live theater available. Fans of the Border Line boast that people drive in from more than 100 miles away for the show. ''There's not a lot to do in a small town, so two times a year there's an outing,'' said Chris Tharp, who works in a bank and plays a lady-in-waiting. ''We always have a good time.''

Mary Ellen Watkins, who runs a beauty shop in her garage here, says she has not missed a show yet. Her strategy? ''I always come the first night, so if I like it, I can go again.''

The Barksdale Theater in Virginia proclaims itself the nation's first dinner theater. It opened in 1953 in an 18th-century tavern along an old stagecoach route, in the small town of Hanover, now a suburb of Richmond. The six founding actors were young college graduates from New York City. They lived upstairs and put on the plays in the basement; meals were served on the first and second floors.

''In the beginning they never intended to have dinner with the plays,'' said Bruce Miller, the present-day artistic director of the Barksdale, which still puts on some shows in the old tavern. ''But when they started to do the first plays, people said: 'Good grief, we had to drive all the way from Richmond to Hanover. It would be great if we had something to eat.' '' And so the dinner theater evolved, with one of the actresses, Muriel McAuley, serving as a cook. Fried apples, spoon bread and wilted salads were the specialties of the house.

The dinner-theater concept caught on in the 1960s as a chain of so-called barn theaters expanded through Virginia, North Carolina and other states. These featured a circular ''magic stage'' that descended from the ceiling.

''You would transform the dining room into the theater,'' explained Rick Jones, whose father, Conley Jones, helped found the first such theater, in Richmond, in 1961.

Tastes have evolved through the years. Ms. McAuley at the Barksdale was always glad that her dinner and theater occupied different rooms, since ''she didn't like clanking dishes,'' Mr. Miller said. (The Border Line avoids this problem by making sure that the audience members have finished their main course before the curtain rises.)

Today running a dinner theater can be a struggle. Production and royalty costs are high, and with new food and a different cast each time, Mr. Jones said, ''that's like opening a new business six or eight times a year.'' The National Dinner Theater Association now has just 32 members, down from 48 two decades ago.

Mr. Jones, who runs his business for profit, said he would not dream of opening a dinner theater anywhere with fewer than 500,000 people in a 50-mile radius. By contrast the efforts by Kiowa and other small towns essentially serve as community-building activities.

One hundred miles to the southeast, in the dying town of Garber, Okla., volunteers are fixing up an old grocery store next to Billy Bob's Bar, one of the few Main Street establishments still open. The theater, which specializes in western melodramas, will seat 90 people in its new building, up from 60. Mike Letteer, the board president, is hopeful that the theater will start generating revenue. ''We plan to use the money to continue to renovate buildings down on Main Street,'' he said in a telephone interview.

Last year the Impromptu Players Community Theater in DeRidder, La., served as a refuge for several families after Hurricane Rita. Anna Wiggins, the organizer of the theater, cooks everything: this year it's chicken and dressing with a cranberry dessert.

''Once Upon a Mattress'' was the 27th production for the nonprofit Border Line Theater, which is supported by ticket sales ($20 each for the dinner productions), local donors and a grant from the Kansas Arts Commission.

Recruiting a cast remains a challenge, especially men, since ''they're usually busy in the field,'' said Janet Robison, a stage manager. Kiowa's performances take place in the community building, a historic if nondescript structure that served as a theater in a prisoner-of-war camp in Oklahoma during World War II. After being moved to Kiowa, the building was used for a time as a basketball court; it now plays host to dances and weddings as well as theater.

The Border Line generally sticks to comedies and musicals, although even these are not always a sure thing when heartbreak is involved. ''When we did 'Steel Magnolias,' a lot of people didn't like it,'' Mrs. Robison said.

But the long-term issue facing the Border Line is the same one facing the town over all. As Lloyd Jacobs, an 81-year-old retired letter carrier who serves as the set designer, said, ''Our big problem is that all the people that started it have got old.'' More than half of Kiowa's population is elderly. ''There's nothing right now to bring young people here,'' said Trayce Lohmann, a homemaker who is married to a farmer and works the Border Line's lights.

Except maybe for a few nights, when the doors of the community building open and the footlights come on.

Photo: Words, music and steak: Enjoying a meal and a performance of ''Once Upon a Mattress'' at the Border Line Theater in Kiowa, Kan. (Photo by Larry W. Smith for The New York Times)